I’ve been in Sweden since June 16 and will be here for a while longer (no return date yet). I’m staying in Skövde, which 1) Is somewhere between Gothenburg and Stockholm, and 2) Is pronounced with an “H” sound at the beginning instead of “Sk” (WHAT?).
This was planned as a five-day vacation, but has become an extended stay. It’s a very different trip than I set out on — and that’s an unquestionably good thing. I’m able to work remotely while I’m here, and there’s someone *amazing* around to keep me company.
If you know of awesome things to do in Sweden or nearby over the next few weeks, or awesome people I should meet (maybe you?), then please leave a comment and let me know!
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Some Favorites
This portrait by Flickr user JordiGual.
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Things Magazine, an old favorite that I’ve been paying new attention to. It’s an excellent source for almost anything that could interest a person with interests (with a bit of focus on architecture and design), presented in a seemingly non sequitor format, which is part of why it’s so wonderful.
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The Ora Unica (Single Hour) watch by Denis Guidone
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Two architecture/design blogs recently added to the reader: MinusFive and CoolBoom.
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A reliable way to keep a U.S. citizen abroad feeling comfortable and entertained: This American Life.
Some of the best episodes are from the live shows they do on stage, like this one and this one. I also love the Turncoat episode, not because it’s funny, but because the second act is about an informant (which always intrigues me) and deals with events surrounding the Katrina disaster, which still makes me ache and nearly cry from anger and sadness, four years later.
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The Infinite Summer challenge, sponsored by friends and mentors at The Morning News.
You have until September 22 to read all 1,000 pages of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. GO!
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The funny and eerie paintings of Scott Listfield:
(via BOOOOOOOM!)
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Cabinet, a quarterly magazine, which I used to buy with glee whenever I happened across one back in Florida. The unpredictable breadth of its articles and beautiful, often mysterious inserts makes it feel like you’re opening a treasure box rather than a magazine. This month’s theme is Deceit.
I’m so pleased to say that the very first Chromatic design meetup was a success! More than 40 people attended and provided feedback on a total of 10 sessions on two tracks — many of which were last-minute sign-ups at the door (which we highly encourage and appreciate!).
We learned a lot from this event, and have taken copious notes on how to make Chromatic II even better: more keynotes, more breaks between sessions so you can mingle, self-organize discussions or just relax, plus lots of other ideas contributed by attendees.
The date for the second Chromatic is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, August 15. Keep an eye on the wiki for updates!
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Here’s the transcript of my ten-minute talk, “Watching the Wall: Dealing with Unexpected User Innovation” (edited for blogworthiness). You’ll have to excuse the lack of images. For now, please use your imagination.
read more…
I’m happy to announce that Bay Area designers will soon have a monthly meetup where they can share their ideas, receive meaningful feedback from peers, and improve their skills practically and directly.
We call it Chromatic (formerly The Drawing Room*), and you are invited to attend!
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The first Chromatic will be on Saturday, June 6 at Hot Studio in San Francisco.
Please join the wiki and Google Group if you’d like to attend and shape this event with your suggestions and resource help. We solemnly swear we won’t get email-happy — just the important stuff, like an invitation to the first planning meeting this week!
Want to know more before you join? Read on…
Republic Bikes: Custom bicycle for $344 (if you’ve ordered and ridden one, please let me know).
“Jennifer Aniston ended relationship with John Mayer because of his Twitter ‘obsession’”
16 Fresh Adobe Air Applications for Designers and Developers
The Rhizome 50,000 Dollar Webpage
“wake” by flickr user harry booth
“You Hear Colors” – CFCF
“A Bluster in the Air” – No Kids
“Hung Up on a Dream (Zombies cover)” – The Tough Alliance
“Everything is Shit” print by Steve Powers (sold out).
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A lovely song for you: “Computer Love (Kraftwerk cover)” – Glass Candy
And a danceable one: “My Beau (feat. Paperboy and Erika Rose)” – Daedelus
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“German Lovers — Aged Six and Five — Try to Elope in Africa” – The Guardian Possibly the most heart-warming article you will read in a newspaper this year.
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Portrait of Sara Lov by Bryan Sheffield:
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The “St. Valentine’s Day” episode of 30 Rock, aka the best TV show in the world.
“One of the things you … will discover, in the years after you get out of school, is that managing to really be an alive human being, and also do good work and be as obsessive as you have to be, is really tricky.”
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“Ecology” – Anni Rossi
“Machine” – Anni Rossi
She’s another 4AD artist to watch. A talented multi-instrumentalist at age 23.
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“i want” by Jessica Williams
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graphicguestbook.com. Yes, it’s all in German, and, no, I don’t know German. But luckily there’s Google Translate and web conventions like the “OK!” button to guide you along. You can sign mine here.
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What the Font iPhone app. “WhatTheFont for iPhone connects directly to MyFonts’ acclaimed font identification service … so you can get your font fix right there on the spot.”
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The new video for “Half Asleep” by School of Seven Bells.
I only recently learned that one of the twins from School of Seven Bells (Claudia Deheza) was in a side project with Scott Herren of Prefuse 73 called A Cloud Mireya, and now they’ve got a baby together. Cute! [thanks, Casey]
“I’d just like to see thinking come back in style”
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Limited-edition stuffed robots by Patrick Moberg and friends Jessie (who created the design) and Bill. This guy is called Mellowtron, and there were only 100 made!
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“The key to happiness is to find something bigger than you and devote yourself to it.”
- Dan Dennett
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The Museum of Broken Relationships, “an art concept which proceeds from the assumption that objects possess integrated fields – ‘holograms’ of memories and emotions – and intends with its layout to create a space of ‘secure memory’ or ‘protected remembrance’ in order to preserve the material and nonmaterial heritage of broken relationships.”
Appropriately enough (to my life, at least), it will be in San Francisco on February 14, Valentine’s Day, at Root Division gallery.
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“My Maudlin Career” by Camera Obscura. It’s the title track from their forthcoming album, which will be released on 4AD on April 20.
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The work of Sebastian Brajkovic:
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“From Stardust to Sentience” – High Places
High Places is playing a show with Grouper at New Museum this Friday, February 13.
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This crazy piece and others from the Beckmans College of Design show during Stockholm Fashion Week.
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Flickr was founded five years ago today!
I’ve been a member for about four years, and have used it consistently during that time. I’ve never had a problem or a reason to complain.
Flickr has been instrumental in motivating me to *go outside* and take pictures, and to improve the quality of the photos I take. I’ve also managed to form some nice online friendships via FlickrMail and comments, a couple of which will be moving into the real world in the next week.
Thanks, Flickr! And happy birthday!
In January:
On the last day of the month, I drove to Bolinas with a new friend.
I’d recently learned that its residents take down road signs leading there so it can remain a secret, and was highly curious about what made it so special.
For some reason I’d assumed it’d be a well-manicured paradise for the elite. Turns out it’s a small, laid-back town full of normal working-class folks and hippies who like to hang out on a cozy little beach with their kids and dogs. A nice surprise.
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I bought the latest issue of Seed magazine and was struck by the no-bullshit forecast of our future in “2009 Will Be a Year of Panic,” which is full of thought-provoking nuggets like:
But a delusion that lasts for decades is not a delusion. It’s an institution. And these, our institutions, are what now fail us. People no longer know what they value. They don’t know what to believe.
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My best friend in the world e-mailed me a link to Paul Graham’s “How to Do What You Love,” which includes the brilliant advice to “always produce.”
“Always produce” is also a heuristic for finding the work you love. If you subject yourself to that constraint, it will automatically push you away from things you think you’re supposed to work on, toward things you actually like. “Always produce” will discover your life’s work the way water, with the aid of gravity, finds the hole in your roof.
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The top five most-played tracks in my iTunes library were:
- “My Girls” – Animal Collective
- “Half Mast” – Empire of the Sun
- “Swedish Boy” – Obi Best [thanks, Brian!]
- “So Much for the Afternoon” – Headlights
- “Running Up That Hill” – Chromatics
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In February:
I’m the featured artist on Art Fag City, which means that a series of headers I created in Skitch will be the site’s masthead for two weeks.
Why Skitch? Because it’s a free app that uses a visual language common to our online experience. A simple palette and big fat arrows are what Skitch is all about — and it’s all that it needs to be about. Its primary use is grabbing screenshots to be quickly altered and shared. You don’t need to worry about layers and filters for that. It’s a simple tool that’s also really powerful. I dig its functionality, but even more than that I love it for its accessibility. You don’t have to be rich to afford a copy, and you don’t have to be a design geek to understand how it works.
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I’m completely stoked on the Dark Was the Night compilation, which will be released by 4AD on February 17. This puppy is a two-disc set featuring artists familiar and new. To demonstrate, the first track is a collab between David Byrne and Dirty Projectors. So good. Other artists include Arcade Fire, Beirut, Blonde Redhead, The New Pornographers, Sufjan Stevens, Yeasayers, and Yo La Tengo.
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I’m intrigued by the opening of Singularity University, which “aims to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies and apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanity’s grand challenges.” In other words, it’s a school for geeks of the very best variety: the kind that consider the impact and implications of the work they do. I plan to keep an eye on developments there in the coming year.
I’ve been on vacation for the past week, relaxing and discovering (or rediscovering) delightful bits of SF. Most of the things I’ve enjoyed can’t be linked to, which is perfectly fine and good by me. Sometimes the happiest bits of life are best left undocumented. Not everything can (or should) be included in a status update.
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A kind reader sent me Merriweather Post Pavilion, which I adore as a whole. It’s just so completely on point. It pins the aesthetics and feelings of this time so well.
2009 is going to be an interesting year for music. I’m highly curious to discover what “recession music” sounds like. An article in The Guardian contends that the sound of this era is cosmic disco, but I disagree. I think that’s the pre-recession sound. The in-denial sound. Thanks to the words of our new President, we’re moving into a state of acceptance of this problem on a national scale, and the sound of that phenomenon is vastly different. I’ll be doing a bit of research on this in the coming weeks. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the meantime.
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I’m completely excited to have discovered The Space Collective, which describes itself as a place
where forward thinking terrestrials exchange ideas and information about the state of the species, their planet and the universe, living the lives of science fiction today.
If you like to think about things like The Singularity, this is the place to hang out online. I could get lost browsing images and blog posts there all day.
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I’ve come across lots of clever quote this week. Among my favorites is this line from the about page of artist Michael Tolmachev:
It doesn’t have to be that we never dare to tell each other what we really want, to share ourselves honestly, to use our talents and capabilities to make life more bearable, let alone more beautiful.
So simple. So true.
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Visually, I’ve been enjoying the photos of Flickr user ir_photo_gallery (Ibán Ramón). Space and stillness come together in his centered subjects:
That same softness is present in this piece by Tumblr user Peekasso:
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Lately my posts have felt like calls to action. Consider this one a call to stillness.
Drifting Ice, Spitzbergen, Norway, 1890 – 1900 — The Library of Congress
Yesterday we got a new president.
I could not be more proud of President Obama. I know that positive change will come not just from him and his administration, but from all of us who have been inspired by his poise, conviction, and character.
Today I’m still trying to come to grips with the fact that I missed it. The inauguration began at 8:30 a.m. PST, and I missed its conclusion by about ten minutes — for no good reason.
I tried to make the best of it by capturing what happened after in photos and screenshots of headlines from around the world.
There were two big screens set up for the public in San Francisco: one at Civic Center, outside City Hall, and another in Yerba Buena Gardens. I visited both and watched the post-inauguration news alongside my neighbors.
It was interesting to watch the news with strangers. It was a special moment, yes, but there was also something wonderfully mundane about sitting on the lawn, listening to announcers rattle off the dessert list on the inaugural dinner menu.
We weren’t really there to hear the news. We were there to experience something, together, as a community. Opportunities to do that are so rare these days. We relished in that togetherness until they came to pack up the screens.
Later I paid homage to our new President and his new administration by making use a public service: I used my San Francisco library card for the first time.
